The appellate panel of the Southern District Military Court mitigated the sentence of Seferbeg Gadzhiev, found guilty under the article on military 'fakes', from a real term to a fine, writes 'Kommersant'.
In April of this year, Warrant Officer Gadzhiev received 5.5 years in a general regime colony for conversations with colleagues, and he was also stripped of his military rank.
According to the investigation, Seferbeg Gadzhiev held defeatist conversations with colleagues in September last year during a guard duty while guarding a warehouse of one of the units stationed in Rostov-on-Don. As stated in the court documents, 'wanting to frighten the personnel subordinate to him from the guard, he decided to mislead them regarding the fulfillment of the tasks of the Special Military Operation (SVO)'. The prosecution believes that the warrant officer 'publicly conveyed to them, under the guise of reliable information, knowingly false information regarding the true progress of the SVO tasks, showing his awareness of the allegedly real situation of the Russian armed forces, exaggerating the successes of the enemy in the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic and negatively assessing the actions of the Russian armed forces'.
Gadzhiev himself admitted guilt, the defense in the appeal did not request acquittal and annulment of the sentence, but only pointed out violations of the Criminal Procedure Code norms during the case review. The military's lawyer noted that Gadzhiev spoke with colleagues in a private conversation, therefore, his actions lacked the sign of committing a crime 'using official position'. The defense also pointed to the 'excessive severity of the punishment', during the appointment of which the court did not take into account the defendant's remorse and data about his personality. Moreover, Gadzhiev expressed a desire to go to war in Ukraine.
The court decided that the warrant officer was not the initiator of the criminal conversations, the opinion expressed by him was 'not perceived by the interlocutors as being imposed on them or obligatory for them, since the conversation between them was of a domestic nature, and Gadzhiev's words did not affect their personal position regarding the SVO, as they remained of their own opinion'. And replaced the term with a fine of 3 million rubles, returning the convicted rank. The court credited the time the military spent under arrest towards the fine, reducing the amount to 2.5 million rubles.